vague desire, for which I could not account, to read once more that word on some chance stone. Twice only have I found it—that oross-encirding 'VIVO'—once in Danzig, once in Nuremberg. In both cases Time's finger has rubbed out the name; in both the 'VIVO' shines out fresh and untouched as if instinct with life.
I had been told in my youth, and had always believed, that my grandfather had not left behind a single line in his own writing. All the more excited was I then when one day I discovered in a secret drawer of an old writing-desk—an ancient family heirloom—a packet of notes which had evidently been written by him. They were enclosed in a book-cover, on which I read the strange sentence:
"How shall man escape death if not by ceasing to wait and hope?"
At once I felt light up within me that mysterious 'VIVO,' which had ever throughout my life accompanied me with a faint shimmer, dying away a thousand times only to revive without any apparent outer cause in dreams or waking moments. If I had at times believed some chance had put that 'VIVO' on his tombstone—a parson's choice perhaps—now, with this sentence on the book-cover before me, I knew for sure and certain the 'VIVO' must have had a deeper meaning for him; must doubtless hint at something that filled the whole life of my father's father. And indeed, as I read on, page after page of his bequest to me confirmed my first intuition.
Most of the notes are of too private a nature to have their contents revealed to other eyes. It must suffice if I touch lightly on those details which led to my acquaintance with Johann Hermann Obereit.
